DO JAPÃO PARA O MUNDO: ROMEU E JULIETA EM MANGÁS, SHAKESPEARE NA CONTEMPORANEIDADE

Abstract

Adapting literary works into visual media (paintings, movies, television shows, comic books) has become a common practice in the twentieth century cultural scene, especially with the advent of the cinema. The play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, has several visual adaptations. The present study aimed to understand how two adaptations of Romeo and Juliet for comics (specifically for the Japanese style - the manga) relate to Shakespeare`s narrative, as well as to the tradition of manga and other contemporary cultural products. Mangas are communication and mass entertainment products strongly consumed in Japan, and internationalized in the last two decades, as a result of globalization. Thus, it can be said that both adaptations studied are representative of both Western canonical literature and Eastern mass culture, as well as of two cultural traditions: the English tradition of Shakespeare, and the Japanese tradition of mangas. Although they have some aspects in common, the two mangas studied are from different countries: one adaptation, Romeo and Juliet (2007) is part of the Manga Shakespeare collection, by English publisher SelfMadeHero, while the other, Romeo X Juliet (2007) was released by Japanese publisher Kadokawa. Through the analysis of the changes in Shakespeare`s narrative, as well as their relation to manga conventions and to other cultural products, it was possible to observe that both adaptations are hybridized products which express two phenomena of our globalized contemporaneity: deterritorialization and globalization of culture, and the persistence of certain traits of local tradition.